With the advent of modern communications, a variety of communications modalities and devices exist within a user's premises. Traditionally, customers made (and still make) telephone calls via the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Many data communications modalities exist, including several packet-based communications solutions that provide broadband access to the Internet and World Wide Web using, for example, Internet Protocol (IP). These include digital subscriber line service(s) offered through telcos, and data over cable services (e.g., broadband services over the networks traditionally provided by cable television operators). Although these packet-based broadband IP networks have been referred to as “fixed” because of the lack of mobility of the on-premises access point, these networks can still include the use of wireless technology. For example, wireless communications can be incorporated in the delivery infrastructure of the fixed packet network (such as satellite or radio transmission towers), and fixed packet networks can also be accessed via a local wireless network (which typically has limited range) such as a Wi-Fi™ (i.e., wireless) network.
These fixed packet networks have also allowed users to make telephone calls (voice calls) over them using by carrying voice packets over the fixed packet networks. This technology includes, for example, Voice over IP (VoIP) technology on a broadband IP network.
In concurrent developments, mobile/cellular communications devices, such as mobile handsets, have become ubiquitous in modern society. Mobile communications devices such as “smartphones” can allow users to make telephone calls, send or receive electronic mail (e-mail), browse the World Wide Web, check appointments, and get directions, as well as perform many other functions. Such mobile devices typically use cellular networks to handle telephone calls. However, cellular networks often vary in quality and coverage area. It is typical for users having a cellular phone service to discontinue a phone call on their mobile device and start another call using a fixed communications phone, such as a POTS phone (e.g., telephone connected to the PSTN) or VoIP phone, to communicate once the users are in their premises.
With the rise of VoIP and mobile/cellular networks, fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) represents an aim by the telecommunications industry to allow transitions between the fixed packet network communications domain and the mobile domain. As an example of such an FMC process, a user's in-progress communication session, which may be a voice call, can move from communicating through the mobile (i.e., cellular) network to communicating through a fixed packet network while the user is on the same mobile phone, and vice versa. This “handover” from a cellular domain to fixed domain (and vice versa) preferably occurs without any significant interruption or disconnection in the communication session noticeable by either user. The FMC network can allow, for example, a user that initiates a cellular phone call on his or her handset out of the premises to continue with the same call on the same handset, but on the fixed packet network, when the user arrives in his/her home. Conversely, if a user having a mobile handset places a call over the fixed packet network via the fixed packet network's wireless access point, and the signal to the wireless access point signal for the fixed packet network degrades (for example if the user moves outside the premises), a FMC service should allow the user to continue with the communication on the same mobile handset over the cellular network.
Implementations described in this disclosure provide for the handover of two sessions initiated by a user having a mobile communication device, wherein one session is active, and the other session is on hold. In the case of a session that is voice, an on-hold session would typically be a logical state in which neither user of the session can hear the other. Additionally, this disclosure provides for the handover of an on-hold session in which the on-hold session is between a mobile handset device and a peer CPE device connected to a fixed packet network, or between a mobile handset device and a peer CPE device connected to a PSTN network.
Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicate like elements.